That’s right. It happened. You’ve run out of space on your walls for movie posters, your shelves are overflowing with comic books, and your desk is so full of geek paraphernalia that it is no longer functional as a, ya know, desk. There’s probably even an action figure hanging from the pull chain of your lamp… admit it! Now, the only remaining vestige of blank space your room has is the door. No, not the inside of the door that faces your room, that’s long been plastered with posters. We’re talking about the part of your door that faces out. Sure, you could put a simple “Keep Out” sign on there, but you need something that says more. And these sci-fi themed door decals do just that. The Airlock, Armory, and Laboratory designs don’t just say “Keep Out.” They say, “Keep out! Because I’m definitely in here, alone, and with my action figures.”

The door decals are available for purchase at Think Geek. Thanks to GeekxGirls for the find.

Heart-Beat Productions has created a live-action short inspired by the Batman: The Animated Series episode titled “Beware The Gray Ghost.” The episode reveals that Bruce Wayne’s childhood hero was The Gray Ghost and that the fictional TV show character might be connected to a string of recent heists in Gotham. Fans will remember that The Gray Ghost was voiced by '60s TV Batman star Adam West.

Directed by J.L. Topkis and written by Matt Landsman, THE GRAY GHOST : The Lost Reel is a fun noir adaptation of what it could have been like if it were an actual show. It would be great to see someone do a whole web series based on “lost episodes” of The Gray Ghost.

We’ve got 6 new poster for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1. The marketing for the film has been presenting the movie world as if it were real. It’s a pretty cool tactic that not many movies can pull off well.

These posters feature Natalie Dormer (Cressida), Mahershala Ali (Boggs), Elden Henson (Pollux), Evan Ross (Messalla), Wes Chatham (Castor), and Liam Hemsworth (Gale Hawthorn).

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 marches into theaters November 21st (USA).

Source: Wired

A few years back, a lithium-powered Tron: Legacy-inspired lightcycle went on the market for a reasonable $55,000. Soon after, officially licensed Tron leather motorcycle suits were released. The only thing missing? Tron-inspired helmets, of course! I’m sure if you were willing to drop the money on a cool but impractical electric motorcycle, you’ve probably found someone to build you a luminescent helmet. But if you’re riding a bike you already love and want a cheaper way to show your love for Tron (or just want to take an extra safety measure so people can see you when you’re riding), LightMode has you covered. They are currently taking orders for their electroluminescent helmets and mod kits on their Kickstarter page.

Here are some tech specs from Uncrate:

LightMode adds glowing EL components onto the outside of the helmet using a combination of super-strong glue and chemical accelerator. You control things via a box that clamps onto the helmet between the shell and padding, runs on 2 AA batteries, and gives you three modes: a Tron-like constant glow, a blink setting, and off.

You can watch the Tron-inspired helmet in use in the video below, which features a Daft Punk-inspired soundtrack. For those of you who only have a bicycle, you can always just buy these.

Drew McWeeny at HitFix is reporting that no fewer than five sources have told him that Warner Bros. has a strict “No jokes” rule for all DC superhero movies in development. McWeeny posits that the rule is likely a reaction to the failure of Green Lantern, a terrible movie that was chock-full of jokes. It seems likely that the huge success of the very, very serious Dark Knight Trilogy also played a role in the formulation of the No Jokes rule, but I think they have learned the wrong lesson from their failures and successes. 

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy took itself very seriously, exploring fear and pain and chaos. Batman Begins was an exciting departure from the lighter, brighter superhero movies we were used to, and the sequels plunged us even deeper into the darkness. The Dark Knight was probably the best, most important superhero movie that has ever been made, and I don’t see anyone topping it anytime soon. Nolan had important ideas to explore, and he used Batman to do it. But the lesson Warner Bros should have learned isn’t “All superhero movies should be dark and self-important.” It’s “Figure out what you’re trying to say and let that guide the tone.” Looking at Green Lantern, the movie wasn’t bad because it was funny. It was bad because it didn’t know what kind of movie it was trying to be.

Let’s take a look at Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, which seems likely to have already set the tone for all of the upcoming DC superhero movies. It was very successful. But one of the biggest (and most valid) complaints about the movie was that it was no fun, and Superman movies should be fun. Unlike Bruce Wayne, whose parents were murdered right in front of him and then grew up mostly alone in the hellscape of Gotham (He had Alfred, I know, but that doesn’t make up for it), Clark Kent was adopted as an infant by loving parents and grew up in an idyllic small town. Those don’t create equal amounts of angst. By playing only the negative aspects of Clark’s superpowers and recasting Superman as a friendless outsider with a fearmonger of a dad, Snyder robbed the hero of all his light. Yes, his powers make him different, but isn’t there some joy in flying? Isn’t there some fun to had in super speed? At the very least, there should have been witty banter in the Daily Planet newsroom, but that place was joyless as well.

What’s really surprising is that the movies Man of Steel so desperately wanted be—The Dark Knight Trilogy—actually had some jokes. In addition to being terrifying, the Joker was, well, a joker, even if his punchlines tended to be horrifying. There was wit and humor in those movies without having characters crack wise. The Scarecrow’s return as the Judge in The Dark Knight Rises was a textbook example of adding humor without sacrificing tone. Small, funny moments can relieve a little tension and drive the audience’s emotional response. At the Man of Steel screening I went to there was only one laugh line, and that came from a random, disposable character.

The point of this article isn’t to bash Man of Steel (I actually thought it was okay). The point is Batman and Superman aren’t interchangeable, and you shouldn’t try to make a Batman-type movie about Superman. It doesn’t work. And Aquaman is different from Superman, and Green Lantern is different from Aquaman, and the Flash is different from Green Lantern. Movies about them should be tonally different, and that might mean that some of the movies have jokes, and some don’t. DC’s archnemesis, Marvel, has been really great at recognizing those differences in their own characters. They make superhero movies about Iron Man and high fantasy/sci-fi movies about Thor and wartime/political thrillers about Captain America and then they bring them all together into The Avengers, and it all works. They are all set in the same universe without being the same.

Even more ironic is that in the one area where DC kicks Marvel’s ass creatively, TV, they let the character set the tone. DC Entertainment is launching four new shows this year, and none of them are alike. Gotham is set in Gotham City, so it’s dark and Lt. Gordon broods and everyone is jaded and there are few jokes. The Flash is fun and hopeful, but not without pathos, because Barry Allen is optimistic and cute and sincere. Constantine is dark and brooding with sardonic humor. iZombie is a very pretty, very funny coming of age dramedy with a lot of brain eating. Their existing, fantastic, TV show, Arrow, is pretty dark, but not without hope, and Felicity uses humor as a crutch in a way that feels unforced.

Basically, don’t try to cram a bunch of idiosyncratic characters into the same box. Some of them need jokes. And if you’re going to cast Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, let him be a little funny. He can do funny and menacing, I promise. Watch The Double if you don’t believe me. And don’t set out draconian rules for stories you haven’t written yet, DC/Warner Bros. You don’t want to paint yourself into a corner.

Read McWeeny's whole piece here. It's really good.

Dragon Age: Inquisition has a lot to prove to gamers when it's released in November, and the developers just added some additional pressure to their admittedly already full plate. DA: Inquisition will now be shipping with a co-op multiplayer mode, where up to 4 players can battle it out against the enemies of Thedas. While it will be similar to Mass Effect's take on multiplayer in a lot of ways, there are some key differences.

For those unfamiliar with Mass Effect's multiplayer offering, the game allowed up to 4 people to take on either the Reapers, Cerberus, or the Geth in defending a given level against numerous waves of said enemy. These were broken up by small mission based mini games, such as protecting a drone or hacking into systems throughout the map, but the maps stayed the same from mission to mission. You could also level up your various classes by grinding away or by buying packs that would give you a random assortment of items, gear, or characters. This proved to be the most addictive part of the game.

image courtesy of Gameinformer

Dragon Age takes that concept and tweaks it a bit. You still have the random packs method of collecting loot and gear, but the maps themselves are different every time. It should spruce up the experience just based on the fact that it’s not the same exact map every time through and through, but we'll have to wait and see just how different each playthrough is. You won’t just be defending an area either, as these are almost bite-sized campaigns, so you will be accomplishing goals throughout the mission, rather than just surviving for a set amount of time. Take a look at the newest trailer for a glimpse at how the muliplayer will play.

The classes themselves are split between Warriors, Mages, and Rogues, and will contain four of each, with more to come after launch. Once you find the one you like best, you can level them up even if you fail a mission, as you will still gain experience. You will get access to four abilities and two branching skill trees. The other thing that perked my ears up was how you unlock characters. Through the missions and unlocking packs you will unlock crafting items that you can use to craft armor and the like. If you are able to craft the armor of the character you want, you then unlock that character. The game will also ship with what is called Inquisition HQ, which is an app that will be available on PC's, tablets, and smartphones. You can access all your characters here outside of the game to make any necessary tweaks before your next play session. It's a small thing, but when I game I don't have all the time in the world, so the less time I have to waste in the menus during my actual game time the better. 

All of this sounds great in theory, but it just depends on how fun and addictive DA’s combat turns out to be. Dragon Age II’s combat was fun, but glitchy and suffered from numerous frame rate issues, and the original DA was fun as well but slow and at times clunky. Hopefully they have found a way to smooth things out. If so, I will be spending a great deal of time here. You can read the full FAQ here. 

Anyone who saw Guardians of the Galaxy probably laughed a little when they saw the astronaut dog in the Collector’s display room on Knowhere. The totally uneducated may have thought, “An astronaut dog! That’s weird.” Those who know world history but not Marvel history may have thought (and by may have, I mean I totally did), “He has that dog the Russians sent into space! That’s pretty good…” But those among us with more than superficial awareness of Marvel Comics knew that was Cosmo, head of security on Knowhere, and an antagonist of Rocket Raccoon.

In the movie he was played by a real dog, and in honor of National Dog Day yesterday, director James Gunn tweeted a photo of himself with the telepathic, talking space dog. A lot of fans are hoping he turns up again in the sequel. He did recently join the Guardians in the comics, after all…

In honor of #NationalDogDay here's a photo of me and my 2nd favorite dog in the universe. #cosmo… http://t.co/obxxGbf4ZB

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) August 26, 2014

The Season 5 premiere of The Walking Dead is still over a month away, but that didn’t stop the onslaught of Walking Dead news today. We have two teasers for the show, four Entertainment Weekly covers featuring the cast, some casting news, and our first look at Father Gabriel Stokes, a character from the comics being brought to life by The Wire’s Seth Gilliam.

The four awesome-looking EW covers feature Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Andrew Lincoln, and Steven Yeun and Lauren Cohan. They're all in the kind of sequence shots usually only seen in skate and surf magazines. I think if you look closely at the Reedus cover, he’s doing a nollie half-cab. If you look too closely at the Lincoln cover you’ll get punched in the face.

The teaser videos are called “Family” and “Close on Tyreese.” “Family” features Rick laying down down a very important ground rule for their truce with the people of Terminus. And “Close on Tyreese” is a short clip with Chad Coleman as Tyreese holed up in a house with walkers closing in.

The photo of Gilliam as Father Gabriel Stokes comes via Screencrush, who also report that on-set photos of Tyler Williams (Everybody Hates Chris) have confirmed that he’ll be taking on a role in the series as, at least initially, one of Beth’s companions at the hospital where she has mysteriously ended up.

The fifth season premieres October 12th on AMC.

I don’t even know what you’d call a horror remake of a satirical fairy tale, but that’s what we have here, sort of. YouTuber Phillip Raupach has recut The Princess Bride into a trailer for The Princess Died, which is a horror film that casts Wesley as a stalker hell-bent on destroying Princess Buttercup. The effect is mostly achieved by laying the “To the pain” monologue over shots of Wesley kicking ass, and it’s… disconcerting. That really is a deranged speech, but I never minded because Humperdink was such a, well, dink. Divorced of that context, though, I’m starting to think Wesley may have been a psychopath. In addition to being super dreamy, of course.

If these stills from Avengers: Age of Ultron look familiar, it’s because we’ve posted them before. However, these images released by Empire are higher resolution and lack those ugly watermarks. We most recently posted a magazine scan of the above photo with Jeremy Renner as London Fog Hawkeye being directed by Joss Whedon. Yeah, I agree that his and a lot of the other characters’ costumes look kind of silly out of context, but just wait for the trailer. Having seen the footage they screened at Comic-Con (read description here), I can tell you that those costumes meld into the bigger and darker world that Whedon is painting. The photo of Aaron Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen is an ultra high-res image that you can use if you want to make Euro-trash Quicksilver and rheumatoid arthritis Scarlet Witch your desktop. See? I still can’t stop making fun of them even though I know it’s gonna work for the film. In '90s jeans wearing Whedon we trust.

Avengers: Age of Ultron hits theaters May 1st, 2015.

This three panel comic by Nebezial titled “Daily Dose of Stupid and Obvious” features Green Lantern playing a prank on Superman. The joke is obvious and stupid just like the title infers, but it’s still fun.

Tyler Perry is appearing in David Fincher’s upcoming adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s mega bestselling novel Gone Girl, and he recently spoke to Vulture about the role and said maybe the weirdest thing that ever happened. Honestly, it’s bizarre. But before we get to that, let’s go over some regular things he said.

Fincher offered him the role after seeing him in Alex Cross. The last act is different than the book's twist. He and Ben Affleck frequently led the cast and crew in sing-alongs. Affleck has a giant head. Literally. 

“Would you believe that his head and my head are the same size? He's got the biggest head I've ever seen on a person. I mean, it's just ... My head is proportionate to my body. His is not. He's got a big head. And he knows it. He knows it. [Laughs.]”

Now we’re getting to the weird part. Vulture’s Jennifer Vineyard asked him if was aware of the hype surrounding the project before he signed on, and he said, 

“I had no sense of that. If I had, I probably would have walked away from it. If I had known ... This is the honest-to-God's truth. If I had known who David Fincher was, and his body of work ... If I had known that the book was so popular, and so many people loved it ... Had I known all those things, I would have said no. And my agent knew that! So he didn't tell me any of those things! Not until after I had signed on to do it. And the reason I wouldn't have done it is because when things are that magical for people and they become very special for people, there's a lot of pressure for it to be what they want it to be.”

What?! Tyler Perry, successful, working director, didn’t have any idea who David Fincher was?! People can have different opinions of Fincher’s work, but he’s a pretty major, influential director. He’s kind of a big deal. And Perry didn’t know anything about him or his films? Well, surely Perry did a ton of research to figure out what he was getting into and showed up on set well-versed in Fincher’s work? NOPE! Because Vineyard asked him if he knew in advance that Fincher did a lot of takes, and he said,

“Nobody told me. The first time I found out he did that was on set. One of my first lines, on the first day, Ben goes, ‘Just want you to know, minimum, 30 takes.’ And the blood was draining from my face. I turned around and I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’”

Wow. I mean, when I used to temp I would at least google the companies I was assigned to before I just showed up. I am not a man with Perry’s confidence or fame or wealth, though, so I guess it’s different for them. It shows a kind of stunning lack of curiosity, especially when coupled with the fact that he had never heard of the book either. It was “the biggest literary phenomenon of 2012,” a huge seller with almost across the board critical praise. Credit where credit’s due, though, once on set, he did seem to figure out that Fincher knew what he was doing.

“He is the master, man. He is just great. I loved working with him. I learned how to make a movie, number one. — I was just soaking everything up. I was paying attention to every move, every word, everything he was saying when he'd talk to the camera people, the DP — just the level of communication and director-speak was awesome. It makes me want to approach [my next project] with just a little more patience.”

I would love to see Perry take his next Madea movie in a more Fincherly direction. That would be a thing to behold.

Read the whole interview here.

A district in Lyon, France is overrun with Star Wars characters in photographer Benoit Lapray’s humorous LEGO photo series. The pictures show a crash-landed Millennium Falcon, battling Jedi, and the Empire both wreaking havoc and just lounging around. I particularly love the storefronts that were given Star Wars galaxy facelifts. Lapray’s photo series is called “Toy Invasion,” and it was done as a project for LEGO France. We’ve included some of our favorites below.

Be sure to check out the rest of the gallery here. Thanks to MTV.

Horns starring Daniel Radcliffe had me hooked from the first photo. After seeing a bunch of great footage at Comic-Con it’s a movie I can’t wait to see more of. This new trailer is aimed at the UK and is darker than ones released so far. The movie is very much a dark comedy with bits of horror mixed in. We’ve also got a bunch of high-res photos and a couple posters via Dread Central.

Synopsis:

Horns, a supernatural thriller driven by fantasy, mystery, and romance, follows Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe), the number one suspect for the violent rape and murder of his girlfriend, Merrin (Juno Temple). Hungover from a night of hard drinking, Ig awakens one morning to find horns starting to grow from his own head and soon realizes their power drives people to confess their sins and give in to their most selfish and unspeakable impulses – an effective tool in his quest to discover the true circumstances of his late girlfriend’s tragedy and for exacting revenge on her killer.

This rock and roll infused dark fantasy explores why bad things happen to good people and what the loss of true love can do to a man. The widely acclaimed book was on the New York Times bestseller list for six weeks and has become an international bestseller as well.

Horns strikes theaters October 31st (USA).

You may have noticed that we post a lot of Disney Princesses, and today’s offering comes from Seventy-Two Studio, and they promise old stories with new endings. Here is the artist’s description of the project:

Theme: Disney Characters

Idea: The idea was to revive those beautiful stories from our childhood but with some new ending.

Inspiration: Inspired by art and stories. Wanted to create something different and new.

I really like the artist’s style and the color palettes. Which is your favorite?

Okay, so technically she's not a Disney Princess, but the artist included it and we liked it, so here it is.

Thanks to The Art of Animation for the tip.

Donald Glover was a controversial fanboy pick to play Spider-Man, with the role ultimately going to Andrew Garfield. One day we’ll get a Miles Morales centered Spider-Man movie. I’m guessing it’s after Sony realizes people don’t want yet another Spider-Man origin story with Peter Parker. Glover finally gets his chance at being Spider-Man in the animated Ultimate Spider-Man.

USA Today (via io9) reports,

The cartoon Miles is very close to the comic-book version: The 13-year-old is still getting used to being a superhero when he meets the dimension-hopping Peter (Drake Bell), who's trying to stop his old nemesis the Green Goblin from collecting the DNA of various Spider-Men — from Spider-Man Noir to the porcine hero Spider-Ham— for nefarious reasons.

It's an emotional moment for Miles, though, because in his world, Peter is dead.

I haven’t watched the show before. If it’s worth checking out, let me know in the comments.

Is this a spoiler? Anyway, WALL-E finds life in a boot, and hey, it's a baby Groot. Get this design on a shirt for about $15 or a hoodie for $40 in navy, brown, or black.

Source: Naolito, via Shirtoid, via Fashionably Geek, via The Internet, via Planet Earth, via The Milky Way Galaxy, via Your Face.

Great news for tween readers, bad news for teenagers in Shadyside, Ohio. R.L. Stine is bringing Fear Street back, which means even more dead teenagers in the never quiet town and a whole new generation of readers who’ll stay up late to finish their book and then be too terrified to fall asleep. Six new books will hit bookstores starting in September with Party Games (I’m guessing most of the games end in death, so don’t play).

I was never into Goosebumps, but I read most of the Fear Street series as a kid. My favorite was the 99 Fear Street trilogy, because after so many teens were killed by the house, why would you return to it to film a movie? And why would you play your older sister, who was one of the teens who died, in said movie? Nonsensical in the best way. Anyway, I kind of can’t wait to see how much more terrifying these new books are. The original series was mostly written during the supposed “End of History,” after the Cold War but before 9/11. There were no Saw movies. Teens today are so much more, um, screwed up than we were. Hopefully the new series will keep pace with that. And then I will read them and never sleep again.

You can preorder them here.

Also watch this video, and then ponder something with me. One time I read a book in which the main character was on the editorial board for a series of young adult mystery novels that were entirely ghostwritten, but the “author” (who I want to say was named Bob Ross but that’s the painting dude, so I don’t know) had this entire reclusive persona and social media presence. Eventually they hired someone to pretend to be the author. Anyway, do you think this video is the real R.L. Stine or just the person they hired to be R.L. Stine? I saw him on The Today Show 20 years ago and Bryant Gumbel’s daughter interviewed him instead of one of the actual grown up journalists, but still, maybe they called him out of retirement and he had to fly in from Bermuda to pretend to be R.L. Stine again. Probably not, but then again, we are just sentient dust and nothing is real anyway.

Via Jezebel

CineFix’s newest episode of “Things You Didn’t Know” focuses on Marvel's summer hit Guardians of the Galaxy. Its worldwide gross has reached over 500 million. Not bad for obscure comic book characters in space. I knew about 4 of the 7 things shared in the video, but that might be only because I read anything I come across about the film.

Dredd rendered in a watercolor style has an interesting duality to it. The cream of the paper contrasts with the silhouette of Dredd and is then balanced with the negative space of the helmet's design, Mega City’s skyline, a pop of color, and another silhouette of Dredd on his motorcycle. If this was done with real watercolors the artist Bruce Yan would likely have used several precise stencils to preserve the white of the paper.

The limited run of 50 prints has already sold out. Maybe if enough people bug Hero Complex Gallery for a more they might do a second printing. Thanks xombiedirge.